Retro Anime? Do I Like It?
June 22, 2006 at 3:48 pm under anime, animelifeThis was going to be a comment on Hung’s recent post about retro anime. It was getting real long so I figure lets make this into a post. So retro anime do I like it? Hung says that he welcomes the come back of retro anime. Well, here is where I’d have to disagree with Hung. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t entirely hate all retro anime as you will see later. But to be honest there really is not too many retro anime that I like. I really don’t like anything before the 90’s and of those I do like it’s not a very big list. But if I had to choose I would say these are the ones I like.
Galaxy Express 999 (never saw the series) - This is a series or maybe it was the movie I saw long time ago when the SciFi channel showed anime.
Any of Miyazaki’s movies - I’m really not sure how old these are but I saw most of them on TCM back in January.
Mobile Suit Gundam - This is the first series of the Gundam franchise. I saw most of this series back when Toonami showed it. Nice series alot better than Gundam SEED.
Lastly, I’m gonna get a beating for this one but I really love the first Dragonball series. Its tremedously a lot better than any other Dragonball series. This one came out back in ‘86 but the first time I saw it was a few years ago when Toonami showed it. The original Dragonball seemed more like a mystic martial arts movie instead of I’m a alien crap.
Sidebar: I noticed that I tend to write more comments and post in forums than I do post here.
June 23rd, 2006 at 12:19 am
Hey I like Dragonball too. And I do think it’s better to have seen older anime for comparison with the latest anime. It’s way better to watch old anime with good story but not so flashy animation than to sit through new, flashy anime but still is crap. I hate it when some people say yeah this is the best anime ever or this anime is better than this when actually the older (or original) anime series was much better. It just shows ignorance.
June 27th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
Yes…Gundam SEED is crap. However, I for one have never been all that impressed with the original Gundam series. The overuse of “superhero mecha” and the overblown drama of many moments in the series left a sour taste in my mouth. So yeah, I’d agree that “retro anime” as you call it (anime before the 90’s) is overrated. The golden age of anime has definitely been the mid-90’s to the early years of 2000. And now that anime’s beginning to mature, we’re starting to see it diversify, always a great thing in any medium.
June 29th, 2006 at 8:24 pm
You make it sound like all “retro” anime is like that, which is far from the truth. As for the original Gundam, I kinda know what you’re saying. Though that’s particularly Yoshiyuki Tomino’s directing style. If you take a look at any of his newer series like Brain Powered (oh God…), or Overman King Gainer, you’ll see it’s the same kind of stuff.
I think older anime is just as diversified as newer anime. There were a pleathora of ideas thrown around back in those days and anime was highly experimental. This left us with a large amount of content to sift through. But really, anime is anime. You’ll find crap back then just like you find crap today. The only difference is the techniques of animation (I’m a cel-animation fan, myself; as opposed to digital).
I also don’t see how older anime can be overrated at all. If that was true, I’d expect to see sales of older anime go through the roof, but obviously that isn’t the case. They’ll either get some sort of limited or special release, or are put out-of-print faster than anything else because sales are minimal. I’d also expect people to know what the hell I was talking about when I ask them if they’ve seen a certain anime made before 1985. What I would expect is to hear a bunch of people bitching about the animation or some other superficial aspect of a series.
Hardly overrated. Quite the opposite.
June 29th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
By “overrated” what I had meant was that there are a good deal of people (the ones who I talk with about anime) who have recently come about worshipping the old “golden days” of anime. Yeah, there are good shows from those days, and a lot of bad ones, but overall I’d say that the experimental nature of that time period makes it appear a lot brighter than it actually was. Directing and plotlines have evolved as time has passed, giving rise to what I would consider superior, more thoughtful shows than what was available in the “retro” period. Just my opinion on the matter.